Everything you need to know about covering your valuables
Here's the lowdown on cover for your items worth more than £2000.
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Here's the lowdown on cover for your items worth more than £2000.
If you moved overseas and could only pack one suitcase, what would you bring with you? Maybe it’s your engagement ring, that Nikon camera, or the antique watch you got from Grandpa.
We know how important these things are to you, which is why we offer extra cover for them within your Contents insurance policy.
Let’s cut through the gobbledygook of insurance jargon. Adding extra cover for your valuables means something pretty simple: having your insurance company add a valuable item to your policy so it can enjoy that additional protection – covering it for its full value.
So if you’d like to add extra cover for your jewellery, that means it’ll be defended against a wider array of bad stuff that could happen to it. This way, it can be replaced or repaired at full value in case of robbery, burglary, or vandalism.
In your base Contents policy, all your items worth less than £2,000 are automatically covered.
In order to protect your items worth over £2,000, you’ll need to add extra cover for each item individually. With this extra cover, your valuable items will be covered to their full value, up to £20,000 per event.
Generally speaking, you can add extra cover for the following items:
A couple of things to keep in mind, though. You can cover multiple items from each category – say, two rings, a watch, an antique painting, and your new shiny guitar – but the sky isn’t the limit. If you have enough musical instruments for an orchestra, or an entire Tiffany’s collection in your jewellery box, your extra cover can’t necessarily insure all of them. The maximum combined limit for all of your valuable items per event is £20,000.
We only cover your personal items. This means that we can’t cover the items you use for business purposes or professional use. For example, we can cover home office equipment that belongs to you, but can’t cover any business equipment that’s owned by your company or the company you work for, such as your work laptop.
Let’s say you do some professional photography as a side gig. You wouldn’t be able to add extra cover for your professional camera, and will want to look into business insurance through a different carrier.
Another scenario to consider: If your spouse or significant other is the one in possession of the ring you’d like to add, they will need to be added to your policy as an additional household member, assuming they live with you at the insured address. However, if they do not live with you, then they will need to add the jewellery to their own insurance policy to ensure coverage.
Protecting your valuable items with Lemonade Contents insurance is easy
There are three main things we look for when considering Extra Cover for valuable items: Proof of Possession, Proof of Ownership, and Proof of Value. Okay, so what does that all mean?
When submitting your documentation, we will typically request current photos of your items to ensure that they’re in your possession and in good condition. This prevents anyone from trying to insure a valuable item that they used to own, but have actually lost or sold since. Sometimes a digital photo carries metadata that allows our system to confirm the date an image was taken. But this isn’t always the case. If we need to confirm the date further, we’ll be sure to let you know.
Your Lemonade policy only covers you (unless you’ve added a family member as an additional household member on your policy). The documentation we ask for will help us confirm that you’re the legal owner of the item.
If these covered valuables get lost, stolen, or damaged, we’ll need to know what they’re actually worth.
All documentation is not created equal. The right combination of paperwork will make our underwriters smile in delight—and who doesn’t love making an underwriter smile?
First, there are receipts. That’s simple enough, eh? But a few caveats:
We understand that not everyone holds on to receipts though. This is where appraisals come into play. Appraisals are an alternative way to confirm an item’s value, and are especially useful in the case of belongings that wouldn’t have a store receipt – like that engagement ring that you inherited from your great grandmother. An appraisal should ideally include the following:
That really depends on what kind of item we’re talking about. For instance, you’d likely have a store receipt for bicycles, camera equipment, or jewellery you purchased recently. But if that jewellery is a well-worn family heirloom, then you’d want to obtain and submit an appraisal (even if you were able to find the original paperwork, we wouldn’t be able to accept a receipt from 1902).
What about artwork? Either a receipt or an appraisal might make sense, depending on the circumstances. We’re happy to answer specific questions and work through what documentation we need for your individual case.
That said, there are a few things to keep in mind for specific extra cover categories.
Extra Cover is not a compulsory part of your base insurance policy, and so the decision of whether to accept a certain item for this cover is up to our underwriting team. That said, having clear, correct documentation to submit will only help your chances of getting your valuable items approved!
When you first sign up for your Lemonade policy, you’ll be given the option to secure 14 days of temporary extra cover for the items you mentioned during your quote. But to make sure that this extended protection carries on beyond those two weeks, you’ll need to submit the proper documentation.
This is important. If you’re getting Extra Cover for an engagement ring, a painting, and a violin—that’s going to mean three separate submissions of documentation. You can share this with us by sending these documents to our Customer Experience team ([email protected]).
Once your valuable items have been approved and added to your policy, they will be subject to the same cover your base policy offers. If you would like to have them protected against theft away from home, or against damage that was (unintentionally) your fault. You would need to have the Theft & Loss, and Accidental Damage add-ons included as well.
Have more questions about extra cover for your valuable items? Open up your Lemonade app and ask Maya. Or, send us an email over at [email protected] and our team will get back to you as soon as possible.
Please note: Lemonade articles and other editorial content are meant for educational purposes only, and should not be relied upon instead of professional legal, insurance or financial advice. The content of these educational articles does not alter the terms, conditions, exclusions, or limitations of policies issued by Lemonade, which differ according to your state of residence. While we regularly review previously published content to ensure it is accurate and up-to-date, there may be instances in which legal conditions or policy details have changed since publication. Any hypothetical examples used in Lemonade editorial content are purely expositional. Hypothetical examples do not alter or bind Lemonade to any application of your insurance policy to the particular facts and circumstances of any actual claim.